Williams headed Nokia's S60 organization prior to accepting the Symbian Foundation reins in 2008, a few months after Nokia acquired software licensing company Symbian Limited and announced plans to evolve the Symbian mobile operating system to an open source platform. His future plans are unknown.

Symbian retains its crown as the leading smartphone OS worldwide, controlling 41.2 percent of the global market according to data published in mid-August by research firm Gartner. It was just a year ago that Symbian-based devices represented 51 percent of the market, however--faced with mounting competition from Apple's (NASDAQ:AAPL) iOS and Google's Android, the platform has struggled to attract both consumer and developer interest. In recent weeks, both Sony Ericsson and Samsung Electronics have stated they will longer manufacture Symbian-based devices.